Investigating perceptual tolerance of audio-tactile synchrony

Abstract

For a congruent perception of multimodal stimuli, a proper timing relation is required. In this study, we investigated this timing relation between auditory and vibrotactile sensations, in the context of a hand-held device, when auditory parameters are manipulated. The parameters include (1) a frequency of a pure tone and (2) a spectral kurtosis of a band-passed pink noise. The results show that the frequency parameter is correlated with both the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) and just noticeable difference (JND). However, we could not find an effect from the change of spectral kurtosis on PSS nor JND. This indicated that the timing of both modal stimuli may need to be changed depending on a frequency of sound stimuli.